Mario Princess Party! For less than $40

My eldest wanted a Mario Party for her seventh birthday.  I waited to see if she would change her mind.   She is very girly and usually does a princess theme for her parties.  But she borrowed a wii game Mario Party 8 from some cousins and fell in love with it.  She insisted that she wanted her party to be a Mario Party and even told me several times that she wanted the sign to read "Happy Mario Party 8, 7th Birthday Hannah"  I convinced her that a sign that read that way would be terribly confusing and I got her to agree to a simple "Happy Mario Party" sign.  We did so many fun things for this party and I just had to share with the blogging world just in case any other moms wanted to see how to change things up for a girl and still do a totally Super party.

 At first my daughter wanted a princess peach cake, at the last minute she changed her mind because she desperately wanted to tell her friends they were going to eat Mario....go figure right.  But I make the cake design by frosting it smoothly with buttercream.  The design is not freehand.  If you take a piece of parchment paper and put it over a picture of what you want on the cake and then pipe it with clear piping gel and then flip it over on the top of the cake you have a lovely guide to your picture and it works with almost anything.  I've done strawberry shortcake, tinkerbell, tangled, winnie the pooh.  Anything there is a picture of you can do this kind of cake, fairly easy.

 Okay the stars I was rather proud of.  A friend lent me her chocolate molds and I made the yellow stars and then at her sugggestion I cut out some pieces of yellow construction paper glued on a free printable Mario Star and stapeled them over the bags the stars were in.  I meant them as prizes for party games but not every child who was invited showed up so I was able to put one bag of stars in each childs party bag.

 Chocolate mustaches....yeah so freaking awesome and the girls loved them as much or more than the boys.  I did make Mario and Luigi hats out of felt (same friend had a pattern she lent me and extra felt from when she made these for her boys party).  I made crowns for the girls in case they wanted to be Princess Peach or Princess Daisy.  Many girls actually preferred to wear the fake mustaches and Mario or Luigi hats, go figure.

 I boiled some eggs for a game of hold the yoshi egg on a spoon while you run to the end of the yard and back.

 My amazing friend has a super large vinyl cutter and she whipped this up for me in about five minutes.  We cut out as many black mustaches as there were kids and each kid got a turn pinning the mustache on.

 I ended up making cupcakes and a cake because we had grandparents coming over for cake and icecream later that night.  The cupcakes were for the kids and by chance I saw this glass etched by my little brother in art class and I made him lend it to me for the party.  Isn't it cute?

Possibly my most favorite part of this party was the question mark pinata. Seriously how awesome is that.  It was filled with little baggies full of GOLD COINS!! yeah I geeked out over that, but I also bought some cheap hard candy that looked like the candy they sell in the Mario Party 8 game.

For added character (aren't I punny) I made sure pictures of Mario characters were all over the walls and doors.  My little brother drew that sign freehand just fifteen minutes before the party started.  I also (thanks to pinterest) found a place online where you can download and print he-res pictures of Mario Characters on my home printer.  I just printed them on cardstock cut them out and then stuck them to the wall with good ole' fashioned blue sticky tack.  Originally I spend fifteen dollars at hobby lobby for wall stickers untill my friends reminded me I could make my own (I returned those and spent a considerable amount less on the party:-) So my party total, are you ready, it was less than $40*.  Now that does not include my gift for my little Mario Princess.  Getting her the Mario Party 8 wii game doubled my party cost.  But that was the only present I bought her.  I did spoil her and make her a few dresses, hats and shoes for her fake American Girl doll but that didn't cost me anything because I was given the fabric for free and had some patterns on hand.

 

*Side note.  It cost me very little for this party because I had much of the supplies to make things on hand.  I made the cake from scratch because my daughter wanted a vanilla cake, to go along with her vanilla icecream.  I had the construction paper for the sign and printed off the letters on my printer (with ink I already had).  The Mario mustache game was done for free just because my friend is awesome.  And my awesome friend also lent me some leftover colored chocolate to make the treats.  And obviously the ink used for printing off the characters cost money but I didn't count the cost because I already had the ink.  The point is you can do a cheap party if you make things with supplies you already have.